September 9, 1999 Commentary: Funding cut likely to cause deep slide in school quality By PHIL BARNHART OREGON SCHOOLS FACE SERIOUS problems in the new state budget. The final education budget - about $140 million less than the Democratic plan - is not a "compromise," nor is it a "small gap," as characterized in a recent Register-Guard editorial, "Accidental tax reform." For the Eugene School District, Lane County's largest school district, that "small gap" is important. Under the Democratic plan, the district would have had funds to continue the programs it now has, as well as to take substantial steps toward bringing our students to the level needed to meet education reform benchmarks. With the budget the Republicans allowed, the district will be able to fund our current programs in the red this year, but only by using a substantial portion of its contingency reserve. Next year the school district is projected to have to cut a couple of million dollars from school budgets, reducing our students' opportunity for a good education. But the Eugene School District won't be the district worst affected by legislative shortsightedness. Toward the end of the legislative session this year, the K-12 school-funding plan difference between most Democrats (including Gov. John Kitzhaber) and most Republicans was a "small gap" of $200 million. The larger Democratic plan would have allowed nearly all districts to at least continue the programs they had last year and would have allowed some districts to make modest improvements. This would have meant new programs to help meet the education-reform requirements for some districts; for others, it would have meant restoration of some of the budget cuts they have had to endure since 1991. The Republican plan would have meant cuts in programs for our children in nearly all Oregon school districts. The amount finally passed is still $140 million short of the amount needed to prevent cuts for most students. This "compromise" isn't a compromise at all, but merely the largest amount that the Republican legislators were willing to allow. The result is likely to be a slow slide into mediocrity for Oregon schools unless current trends can be reversed. Crow-Applegate-Lorane School District, a small district southwest of Eugene, has long provided an excellent education. It has a very low dropout rate and very high test scores. Because of that "small gap" in funding, Crow won't be able to keep enough teachers to remain accredited after next year. Crow must find a merger partner among the neighboring districts to continue educating our children there. This little district will be lost, to the detriment of children and the Crow-Applegate-Lorane communities. Portland is the last excellent large urban district in the United States. At the other end of the size spectrum, the district faces more very large cuts, which will seriously decrease its ability to educate Portland's students, a big part of our future. Cuts in education don't show up on the street instantly. Children who were first-graders when the cuts began after Measure 5 are now in the eighth grade. If you simply drive by, you see the schools open and the playgrounds full of children at recess. But you don't see the large class sizes, the instruments gathering dust for lack of a music teacher or the empty counselor's office. You don't see that most elementary teachers donate hundreds or thousands of dollars for school supplies that the district can't buy or that parents are running yet another fund-raiser to add a little to a curriculum that still needs help. You don't see the experienced teachers lost to early retirement because trying to reach excellence with 35 or 40 or more students in a class is just too hard to do. You don't see the students who stop learning because the adult time that students need just isn't available this week. It took California more than 20 years to go from the state with the best schools to a state among the worst after Proposition 13 cut school funding. The "small gap" in Oregon between the Republican plan and the Democratic plan is the difference between becoming California and remaining Oregon; it's the difference between slow strangulation and the ability to improve our children's education. During our last election, most legislators said that education was their "first priority." They know that Oregonians want excellent schools for our children. But those who pushed for lower school appropriations thought Oregonians wouldn't make the connection between the program cuts in Portland, Eugene and elsewhere, as well as the end of Crow, and the "small gap" between their budget and the Democrats' plan. If Oregon is to avoid going the way of California, we must understand that the "small gap" is a lot of education that now won't occur. It's too late to avoid the damage being done now, but when the next election comes around, Oregonians must remember. Phil Barnhart submitted this statement in his capacity as chairman of the Democratic Party of Lane County. He is a member of the Eugene School Board but did not write on behalf of the board.

September 9, 1999 Letters in the Editor's Mailbag Roberts shows disdain Jack Roberts has toed the line of impropriety for years, employing his position as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries to take partisan swipes at the Democrats. His latest tantrum in The Register-Guard (letters, Sept. 2) defines perfectly his disdain for ethics in government. First he attacks House Minority Leader Kitty Piercy as a member of "the self-appointed elite," implying she's never worked a day in her life. Then he exploits the authority of his office (the same office he declared nonpartisan) to create dissension and mistrust by insinuating that Rep. Dan Gardner instead should have been elected minority leader, because Gardner belongs to the electricians' union! Roberts is neither a private citizen nor a friend of labor, as everyone in the labor movement knows. He'd like his own department eliminated, and what time he devotes to his high-profile job is seemingly spent writing snide, cranky Republican diatribes to the newspapers. We taxpayers don't pay him to run his office for personal political gain, nor to be meddlesome, nor to feather his nest in quest of higher office. He holds the public trust in such contempt that the attorney general should consider rebuking Commissioner Roberts for abusing the prestige of his bureau when he hijacks public forums to provoke feuds within Democratic ranks while openly identifying himself as a Republican. Oregonians may well describe such malfeasance as devilish. Smiling Jack Lucifer for governor? FREDRICK KLAASTAD Springfield Note: click here to go to the letter, Mr. K is referring to.

September 4, 1999 Letters in the Editor's Mailbag Votes contradict words Recently, Rep. Ken Messerle, R-Coos Bay, announced he was going to run for the Oregon Senate in 2000. In a local TV interview, Messerle stated that one of his top priorities is having good family wage jobs here. He gave Portland as an example of having a $50,000 median wage and cited the bay area median wages as being $25,000. He felt it should not be that different on the south coast and said he wanted to improve wages here. This is strange, since Messerle voted for House Bill 2793, which would destroy the minimum wage law for waitresses and waiters. Doing so would take more than a few family wage jobs off of the south coast. He also voted for HB 3607, which will water down existing penalties on employers that do not pay their employees their hard-earned wages. I wonder how Messerle can support family wage incomes and vote for measures that drive wages down even further. Perhaps Messerle doesn't practice what he preaches. JOE DOMAN Coos Bay Note:  Joe Doman is the Publicity Chair of the Coos County Democrats.  The CoosDems E-news is sent out to those interested as the occasion arises. To subscribe, write  [email protected], and mention the E-news

July 9, 1999 Commentary: Republican partisanship responsible for gridlock By HART WILLIAMS WE ALL REMEMBER THIS scenario from childhood: The class bully decides to jump someone on the playground. The screaming of the victim draws a teacher, who, without attempting to determine what the actual situation might be, displays Solomonic wisdom and punishes both children equally. The bully is usually hard-pressed to keep from grinning. The letter from L.L. "Stub" Stewart (The Register-Guard, July 6) is a good example of the adult equivalent that's becoming popular these days. After decrying the bullying tactics of the Republicans in Salem this legislative session, Stewart adds, "But I blame both parties for fostering a system in which there is no mutual respect." Pardon me? It is very chic to render the Solomonic verdict these days: Everyone from Earth First!ers to "compassionate conservatives" seems quick to decry BOTH parties for "par- tisanship." But it's just as unfair today as it was when we were in grade school. I can instantly think of our daily dose of nine hours of hate radio in Eugene-Springfield devoted to bashing anyone so "imbecilic" as to be a Democrat. But I can't think of a single instance of the converse - although there are certainly more "Republican" bashers on the air than Limbaugh, Medved and Reagan. The accusation is often leveled that politics is too partisan, which is followed with the corollary that if we can merely remove partisanship the problems will all magically disappear. But this is absurdly specious. Think of some of the great issues of this century: abortion, labor unions, civil rights, capital punishment. Can anyone seriously imagine that a nonpartisan approach in these instances is possible? Could anyone split the difference on capital punishment and half-execute a prisoner? Can employees collectively half-bargain? Could bathrooms and schools be half-desegregated? Of course not. Partisanship is intrinsic to the political process. But partisanship is not the issue. The problem is that politics without politeness, without politesse, is not possible. Reasonable men can disagree reasonably, but unreasonableness, selfish my-way-or-no-way approaches cannot help but break down, if only because the only political form in which uncompromising political action is possible is in a dictatorship. Compromise and consensus are inherent in our form of government. Without them, everything shuts down. But please don't accuse the Democratic Party of being Tweedledum to the Republicans' Tweedledumber. I remember 1994, when the Democratic Party of Lane County sent the Lane County Republicans a letter offering that we both take a pledge to refrain from negative, mud-slinging campaigns. We were not graced with so much as a reply. Each year since 1994, I have attempted to speak to our Republican brethren at their Lane County Fair booth, and each year, I have been sneered at by these fine citizens. Was I engaged in provocative action? No. I was attempting to build bridges, as Stub Stewart says used to happen in the "good old days" of Oregon politics. I was raised by Wyoming Republicans to believe that we are all Americans first and partisans second. Sadly, this point of view seems to have entirely leached from the current GOP, and at every level of politics - civic, state and national - the process is grinding to a crashing halt. And whose fault is this? The fault of the schoolyard bully approach or the fault of the Democrats? I am hard pressed to find evidence of Democratic perfidy in the current legislative and congressional sessions. It seems to me we've done our best to try to work with the GOP. But Oregon Republicans have shown zero interest in working with Democrats in Salem this year. And the snobbery of those who are "too good" to become involved in the political process, who refuse to roll up their sleeves and work with the system as it stands, is as unsupportable as it is widespread. The next time you need help from your representative, try to call your "Greens" congressman or your "Reform Party" senator. If, however, you are concerned with the current state of affairs, then get involved with your local Democratic or Republican Party. Change is possible, if you don't like what you see, but only if you bother getting involved and only if you're willing to compromise without resorting to sophistry and slander as your political modus operandi. But in the meantime, don't put the problem down to the Democrats, or to partisanship. There is a party that is responsible for the gridlock and the avoidance of responsibility that Stewart decries. Just don't bash the Democrats for it. We're just trying to walk across the schoolyard. Hart Williams is publicity chairman for the Democratic Party of Lane County.